"While You Were Out" Part I - Tackling a New Project

I seem to recall a TV show by that name. Theme being: Deserving Recipient leaves home and, unbeknownst to him/her, a team of interior designers, carpenters, painters, yada yada, takes over the house and re-decorates it.

I have no clue if the show is still on the air (I think it was on TLC or some other channel that's on my "B" List).

I will admit to being a bit of an HGTV Addict, however (I just wish they'd quit shuffling their programming around - dammit - AND bring Paul James the Gardener Guy back to a "normal" and viewable time-slot!). HGTV is on nearly all the time - just because it's easy to watch ("Chewing Gum for the Brain") and there's not much in the way of "plot" so if Roger interrupts me 4,000 times during the course of a program (which happens a lot), it's not like I'm missing anything important...

But anyway, back to the subject at hand: Back in the Early Days of our courtship - when I first moved into Roger's house - I had gotten into the habit of "re-decorating" whenever he'd leave for an extended period of time.

...And there are stories that go along with that!

Who knows? I may end up telling some of them today!

I haven't done any redecorating recently. Hell, I think it's been years actually! And of late I've felt too sh*tty to tackle any projects.

Anyway, Roger is currently doin' the Willie Nelson Thing "On the road again..." He's traveling to Europe - Brussels, Belgium to be precise - for some ECOC Optical Engineer Geek-Fest. So that leaves me with a whoooooole week to "Do Stuff!"

Now, if I had the money, and had planned ahead, I'd've probably made arrangements to have hardwood flooring installed in the living room (installed in such a way that it would blend into the kitchen floor, since we've got an open floorplan), and had the kitchen floor refinished.

But I don't have the money - and I didn't plan ahead! (It's still definitely on the Wish List, however!)

Nope. I've decided to paint the living room instead. The whole house is/was painted in "builder's beige" and, over time, it's gotten really grungy looking. Actually, grunge doesn't begin to describe it - but that's neither here nor there. The main thing is: I hope to tackle ONE room and maybe, just maybe, it'll be a dramatic enough improvement that I can convince Rog to splurge and hire some professional painters come in to finish the job (i.e. the ceiling - which is vaulted and I'm not fond of heights, and, perhaps even paint the REST of the house!).

* * * * *
I *think* I've decided on a color for the living room walls. It's mostly 'golden' with a slight greenish tint. Our house is really dark inside, unfortunately. The living room faces west (and into suburbia) - and we've got a huge shade tree out front - and the room only gets a sliver of direct sunlight in the late afternoon. The beige on the walls is not particularly "warm" so I'm hoping that by going with a golden tint, maybe it'll help brighten things up a bit. I do want it to look like a "color" though - so I'm scared I may end up going too dark. The last thing I need is to darken the room any further!

Additional challenge: With the living room being open to the kitchen, I don't want to clash with the existing color scheme (if you can call it that!) in the kitchen. I did put up some striped wallpaper in the kitchen during one of my previous "WYWO" episodes. There's a chair-rail along the walls of the kitchen and it used to have this truly hideous APPLES over green/beige checkers wallpaper below it. UUUUUGGGGGGLLLLYYYYYY!!! And the wall wasn't sized/prepped properly before the wallpaper was applied, so (Bad! Bad!) I was forced to paper over the existing paper (either that or spend weeks repairing the drywall, and I didn't have that much time!). Anyway, the current "scheme" is that we've got a beige + tan + teeny gold stripes wallpaper that kinda/sorta mimics beadboard wainscoting (definitely an improvement over those Gawd-awful checkered apples!).

I did check-out the paint chips against the wallpaper and I think I've found a halfway decent match. Of course, the paint chips look different under the fluorescent lighting in the kitchen vs. the incandescents (and occasional moments of natural light) in the living room...

It's really tough to decide on colors looking at little 1x2" paint chips and, unfortunately, Home Depot doesn't sell itty-bitty cans of paint samples ("But you can order them online from Behr"- Nope, I'm in "Instant Gratification Mode" now - No Time to Waste!). So I guess I'm just gonna take my chances. Buy a gallon of the stuff and see how it looks. If I totally hate it, I can always repaint it (But let's keep our fingers crossed that I won't have to!)

So today is "prep day." I'm in the process of removing the excess "crap" from the living room. And getting ready to move all the furniture into the middle of the room. Most of it s/b fairly easy - except for the piano (might have to beg a neighbor to help with that!). Remove all the switchplates and whatnot, then spackle and scrub the walls. Fun, eh???

And I'm sure I'll be taking MANY breaks throughout the day - so I'll probably post updates as things progress....................

Wish me luck!!! (Gawd, let this be a project I can FINISH!!!)